Nahvi

You are too ingrained with a monetary system you cant even imagine a system in which one doesn’t exist.

I can imagine it, but only in a post-scarcity society. It just doesn't seem plausible to me until we are at least a Type 1 Civilization, more likely Type 2.

When two people want or need the same limited resource how do you decide who gets it? Money solves that issue. While it is a poor solution, I have yet to see something that wouldn't have just as many problems, though admittedly different ones

Even if we had post-scarcity potential, I am not at all sure human nature would allow it. Some people have a fundamental need to stand above other people, others have a fundamental need to collect things, and then there are takers. Takers being those who would gladly take from others but would never give away their own stuff without being forced, even if it was pure excess.

We live in a time where automation and robotics could allow us much more freedom and dignity

I agree that we are definitely approaching an era where robotics/automation could replace the need for most human labor. Though I don't really think we are there yet. One of my favorite sayings a few years back was, "humans should be in the business of thinking and creating, not laboring." Sure I can buy a "perfect" machine made wooden chair but there is a certain character and richness to having one an artisan made.

I was a fan of taxing the labor of robots that replaced humans and using those funds to cover a UBI long before I ever heard the name Andrew Yang, though even that doesn't get rid of the monetary system.

There are a lot of good points here. There would definitely be a weight and fragility issue. Maybe I am just too attached to the idea.

stated we bar those bigger investors

Oops, somehow missed that you were referring to the original bigger investors.

It seems like it should be easy enough to get those financial advisors for market manipulation. If a large firm says a stock will do better than otherwise expected and then sells their clients' stocks as soon as the price rises, how is it anything except simple market manipulation? Not going after them makes the SEC look like a captured organization, though I easily found articles stating that it isn't captured with a web-search.

some billionaire has staked claims to sell this water

I don't really know how true it is, but my horticulture buddy up there made it sound like the water flowed through a number of small farms that really weren't worth much until the population boom made land prices sky-rocket over the last 20 years.

The bigger issue in the area is that it is more how long the water rights have been retained. If your family bought your farm 150 years ago, you will get your water before the person that bought theirs 20 years ago. It doesn't matter in wet years, but as soon as a drought hits the 150 year farm will get 80-100% of their water, while the 20 year farm will be lucky if they get 20%. If you bought water rights last year, you better conserve your seed and sell your animals quickly because you aren't getting any water.

In a way it is completely fair, it isn't the long-term farmers fault that the state is having an unsustainable population explosion. However, as one of those new residents who really didn't understand the local laws when I moved there, I hated it.

more likely stretch it out to be both thicker and wider

I think there would be a large market for a wide device that needed two wrist straps to hold it in place. Hard to tell sometimes though. It would either become super trendy or only for super nerds. Either way, I would probably scoop it up.

In any case, I am pretty sure the phone companies want us to have a watch also, not instead, and will suppress any development that changes that mentality.

you are the one with the verbal diarrhea.

Fun, fun. Gonna hit me with the old "I'm rubber and your glue" next?

As stated it’s currently handled by municipality workers

If you live in the eastern part of the US, you might find it interesting to look up water rights west of the Mississippi; it is an absolute madhouse.

Spent a year in Colorado not long ago. The water that fell from the sky was owned by someone else before it even hit the ground, though I think I heard that there were some changes specifically in regards to rain barrels since I left.

This seems to be more getting into the issues with a stock exchange (and its rules), of which I have many. I have heard there are benefits to new companies having easier access to investors, but am not convinced that it is a good trade for the societal costs involved.

Even then, do keep in mind, when an investor divests from a company it isn't just burning their connection to it; someone else is buying it. Usually some middle-class chump who didn't understand the company was dying, and is indeed covering the loss by losing his retirement fund to it.

Edit: phrasing of italicized part.

Please stop arguing against your own fantasies of what I might think and actually comment on what I said. Doing the former makes for nice campaign speeches, but we aren't politicians.

Billionaires aren’t the ones that starve when the economy implodes.

Nowhere here did I say billionaires are a good necessary parts of society and we should support them. Crashing the economy will cause mass starvation, but not by those who have the resources and foresight to prepare for turbulent times.

Poor people are literally the foundation of your society

Agreed, but those poor people depend on having a useful currency to trade for tools to make more food. If you crash the economy the little piece of paper we trade around right now will become worthless and we will be back to bartering until someone prints new paper or mints a new specie to use.

The guy making the tools can't do anything with 100,000 heads of lettuce, he needs something he can pay metallurgists with, who in-turn need something to pay the miners with. That lettuce is going to rot before it changes hands enough times to get into someone's belly.

We produce excess of something things, but usually that is in trade for not producing enough of others. Scarcity is not a creation of the uber rich, it just exacerbated by them.

Someone would have to decide whether the avocado farm, almond farm, or the winery got more water in California. Right now it is mostly decided by economic power and a byzantine set of rules and laws dictating who owns the water. Unless we want farmers killing each other over it, we would need to put a new system in place.

I don't have a problem with it, but it is just a simplified version or maybe predecessor of what we have now.